


The Start of the Downfall

by orphan_account



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Some OOCness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:01:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1689233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael J. Caboose wasn't always as empty-headed as he was now. He was pretty normal, in fact, a little slow but normal. So what happened?</p><p>Edited: Jun 23/15</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Start of the Downfall

Michael J. Caboose was born and raised in a colony on the moon with 17 sisters and a family budget too small to care for all of them. His dad, a womanizing space farmer that didn’t know the meaning of condoms or birth control pills, didn’t really have time for each and every one of his children. Even after most of them left the nest. (But he did have time to impregnate several women, the less generous and level-headed affairs dropping their children at his doorstep without another thought. Michael might’ve been a surprise and a half bundled in white cloth, whimpering in a cardboard box like a puppy that needed new owners.)

He tried not to be bitter about it.

As the only male child in a gaggle of girls his hand me downs were a little less than perfect. Instead of whining about how he wanted action figures and other more male distinguished toys he just passed them further down the line to Stacy and Sarah, his younger twin siblings.

Michael, instead playing pretend with toys or used as a dress-up doll with his sisters again, talked to the various farm animals around the barn. It was dumb, he knew, animals can’t talk back, but it made him feel less lonely. There was a robo-hound made of spare parts his father bought a few years back to protect the crops after someone smuggled some foreign birds and accidentally caused an infestation. It had four little legs and barked and had no tail so his older sister Rachel taped her red ribbon to it’s end. it was Michael’s best friend. Though the dog didn’t have a very intelligent AI and couldn’t really talk back, it listened and barked when he complained and that was more than enough.

When Spots died (named by one of his younger sisters, though he thought the speaker’s holes looked more like freckles) after years of being torn apart from the vultures that were quickly becoming problematic in the colony Michael held a little ceremony. He couldn’t bury the body. Dad was adamant that he take Spot to the junkyard for extra money even though him and his sisters protested selling family, Michael curling his 11 year old work calloused fists and setting off on one of his rare tantrums that had his older sisters cooing him lullabies afterward. In the end they had to settle for burying Rachel’s somewhat shredded red ribbon. Michael didn’t really forgive his father after that, he still helped around the farm, still did all his chores, but he started avoiding the family a bit, not that anyone noticed, for being an outlier in a family so large, he never really could hold attention to himself for more than a few seconds.

Eventually, after years of public school and years of ridicule for his family’s status and his less than stellar IQ, came graduation. And with graduation, a decision. Stay at the farm and help around, maybe inherit the land, or move on and do something with his life. He was leaning towards the latter but every time he thought on what he wanted to do, he came up blank. His oldest sister, Donna, a teacher at the local primary and a bus ride away, the one who practically raised the family, urged him to go to college.

——

"You know I can’t make it." Caboose says. He’s seventeen and has just graduated, his diploma hat, a hand me down originating possibly from Donna herself, on his head and a gown two sizes too short on. Dad couldn’t make it and the rest of his sisters had things to do but Donna, her husband, and the twins came so he’s satisfied. That’s what he tells himself. "I’m not as smart as you, there’s no way-"

She stops him, a patient smile on her red lips and a hand on his shoulder, “You always down yourself Michael.” She says in that maternal voice she perfected over the years, “All you need to do is try.”

Her green eyes are a counterpoint to his own blue and her red hair tied into a bun remind him that she is not his mother, that they don’t look anything alike really. He’s tall and muscled, black hair and blue eyes, more like their father (though he hates it, hates the reminder) and she is short, slender fingers and hands despite her help around the farm with tan skin, at odds with the fact that the moon didn’t catch the best sun rays. They’re not even fully related, half-siblings whose only share in genetics are half at best.

It doesn’t stop him from spilling his worries to her though. “Donna, I almost failed high school.” He reminds her. He studied, and studied and even though he passed, it was a near thing.

She hums and continues to dig circles into his shoulder. This would be about time she would say, “Then try harder.” And maybe if he were younger it would’ve worked, he would’ve gone into the job, whatever it may have been, with newfound optimism and a single-mindedness a mule would’ve been proud of, but he’s older, faced with a choice that will change his life and so she just questions, “Then what are you going to do now?”

He shrugs, uncomfortable and instead of pressing for an answer she moves on, talking about her students and the troubles they cause, nothing compared to her own family and siblings, but it still doesn’t erase the doubts forming in his head and the unease under his skin.

He decides to sign up for the military. Once his contract's up, the recruiter promises, he’ll be set and all paid for college. He’s not the first in the family to sign up, three of his older sisters has made it on the field, fighting the good fight, and they all write periodically. He wonders if he’ll be in the front lines like Jesse. She got promoted recently from fighting aliens and winning battles, Captain? Or was it Colonel? Either way, he’s sure he’s made the right decision when Donna asks with a worried voice over the phone. He’s physically strong and that’s something he’s always done right; athleticism. He’s had his fair share of fights during school, always getting in trouble though he never searches for it. He’ll be fine, he assures her.

His dad holds a celebration for him when he brings home the news. Takes him out to the bar even though he’s not twenty-one or even eighteen. His father reassures him that if you got parent’s permission it's fine, so Michael just follows along, and for once, under his father’s direct attention that he was so deprived of as a child, he feels a little happy. The beer tastes horrible but he drinks through the bad taste for that little flash of approval in the form of quirked lips. His father’s friends are rowdy but he thinks it’s not that bad in comparison to the other company his dad always brings home.

He leaves two days later, for duty awaits. His younger sisters crying for him to come back safely at the space terminal and his older sisters patting him and telling him to not to get in any trouble. Dad is not a part of the farewell crew but he spoke his words at the bar, sloppy as they might have been after a few beers, but its enough that Michael doesn’t feel too disappointed.

He’s never traveled away from their little moon colony before: has never known air that wasn’t produced by machines and contained in large reinforced glass bubbles, never seen more wildlife than in his father’s more agricultural based farm. So when he steps off the ship to the camps and sees blue skies and trees a plenty, birds that aren’t vultures in the air, he can’t help but look around and tune out the drill sergeant as he yells about something in a loud voice.

That’s his first mistake among many mistakes during basic. After that it’s “Caboose, do that!” and “Caboose, do this!” The sergeant seemed just seemed to find a lot of faults with Caboose. The more Caboose didn't know, the more angrier he got. The problem was, Caboose didn't know a lot of things. 

Caboose never dealt with yelling well either. It was something that only proved to mess him up even further and while he was ace at all the physical things, drills and workouts coming easy to him, he couldn’t follow directions for the life of him, strategies and plans flying past his head. He knew he wasn’t the smartest, a few seconds behind everyone else, but he had hoped that the military would make him better, faster, more likely to become a sharpshooter and less of the guy known as ‘team killer’.

He hadn’t actually killed anyone (yet), but he came close with an accidental grenade toss (not his fault, he just wasn’t used to this planet’s gravity yet, on the moon gravity locked boots were a more optional thing) and the general and some other high-ranking militants still haven’t forgiven him.

When the time finally came and his time at basic was up, it turned out he wasn’t going to go to the front lines to fight extraterrestrials like he hoped and dreaded. Instead Blue team drafted him. He was handed standard blue armor and told he’d be shipped to a place called Blood Gulch, fighting Red team. They didn’t give much details about it; why the war started, why he was chosen, why he wasn’t going to fight aliens like his sisters before him. But he didn’t question it. The answers were probably obvious and he just didn’t see it yet. He didn’t want to leave on a bad note on his last day and they entrusted him to fight didn’t they? Can’t disappoint them.

So he packs his bags, the little nick knacks of his home with the small things from basic that his sergeant said was always important to have on you, just in case. He pauses his packing when he gets to the well used item at the bottom of the drawer, hovers his hand over the only real gift he’s gotten at basic. A field manual personalized for him. All the complicated words drawn out in a cartoony style, his preferred art style. At first he was thankful for the gift, after telling his bunk mate that he was more of a visual learner, he got the manual the next week. Looking back on it, the snorts and laughter that came every time he fished the manual out. He should've realized it wasn't sincere sooner, should've stuffed it at the bottom of his stuff sooner.

But sincere or prank gift, it helped him. So he picks it up, ignores the ‘Field Manual for Dummies’ printed in bolded black on the front page that should’ve tipped him off sooner, and tosses it in with the rest of his stuff. After finishing off his letter to his family - he doesn’t tell them about Blood Gulch, top secret stuff, he’s sure- he sleeps in his bunk for the last time. The one above his empty since his bunk mate left a few hours back to head for the front lines.

——

He is sent along with a tank, big, green and way beyond his tractor expertise and while he waits for the guys to stop discussing how they were going to pick up chicks in it, he resolves to himself to make friends. He’s never had friends. He was always busy working for the farm and the males around school were always after at least one of his sisters which was a no-no. So he grew up chatting with his sisters which wasn’t the same thing because family had to like each other and while he loved them, they didn’t really want to play in the mud or all the other things Caboose wanted to do.

But now he had an opportunity for a brand new start. Away from his past mistakes and he’d take it and he’d be the type of friend that no one would get mad at it. He’d be the friend his father was, smooth and like he didn’t have trouble with greetings or big words.

So when the topics of girls and girlfriends comes up, he thinks he’s got it handled. His father, playboy that he is, has given him plentiful of advice to his only son over the years, and while Caboose never wanted or needed that advice he knows there has to be truth in some of them. How else would an old man with eighteen children get laid?

"Yeah I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’ve uh… I’ve actually got a girl back home." The one in light blue armor says.

"Oh yeah? Girlfriend or wife?" The one in teal-ish, aquamarine, kind of light blue-green, armor says. It’s an interesting color and Caboose wished he packed his color pencils so he could match the exact hue of the armor. Maybe he can request a pack later from Command.

"No, man, she’s just my girlfriend, ya know? We were gonna get married, but I got shipped out… ah, you know how it works."

"Oh, well, you gonna marry her when you get back?"

It’s as perfect an opening as any.

"I’m not gonna get married." He pipes in, attempting casual. "My dad always said, ‘Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?’"

It was something his father said at that bar several months ago, a bit of advice for his son before he left to become a soldier. It had his friends roaring with laughter, obnoxious and drunken, and the waitress, a young woman most likely still in college, roll her eyes. But even Caboose could see how she fell for his father’s cocky twist of the lips, the arched brow and messed up hair that only stayed down when gelled. He hated that advice and swore to never live by it, living with seventeen sisters meant having a respect for women, but saying it wasn’t wrong was it? They seemed the type of people to appreciate that kind of joke with the picking-up-chicks talk and while he might not be okay with being friends with that sort of people, he definitely didn’t want to be their enemies like basic where it seemed everyone was sidestepping him.

"Hey rookie." The forget-me-not armored one steps forward and while their faces were blocked by helmets, all that crossed Caboose’s mind was menacing. He’s never going to listen to another one of his father’s advice again. “Did you just call my girlfriend a cow?”

In the end Caboose is too flustered and banging his head on the proverbial wall to say anything edgewise and somehow  gets assigned guard duty for a flag on the off chance a general guy shows up.

He tells himself he’ll do better, he’s a soldier and he should start working his best. So when the general comes by in red armor, (weren’t they against red? He doesn’t question it though, he’s sure he’s just over thinking something like he always does) he makes extra care to stand tall and answer politely. Offers the flag when it seems the general has to take back something to headquarters.

Except that was wrong too and he’s still messing up and then he shoots a teammate with their tank and he knows he’s in the shitter. He panics for a while except Church comes back (being a ghost is a thing, who knew?) and he’s not exactly grasped the concept but he’s grateful he’s not entirely killed a person for good. After some time, when Tex shows up and more mistakes happen, he gives up on trying to act smart. It’s obvious he’s not and while the others rib at him for it he feels… relaxed in comparison to basic.

Maybe it’s because the others aren’t that much of good soldiers either. Maybe it’s because it’s like they’re all on an even playing field. Tex has her strengths and they’re more numerous than theirs combined but she still has her vices and that’s money and it eases him until he feels not exactly safe but kind of like he belongs. Like he was hand-picked for this place.

It isn’t until he radios Church to warn that Tex is finishing up her repair on the tank that he feels less like he might start to like Blood Gulch and more like he’s trapped in a nightmare. Someone's controlling him. He doesn’t notice right away, at first he thinks of all the names to confuse his own with, O’Malley is a strange one, not even close to Caboose or Michael, but then he realizes he’s talking without his own say and he figures it’s a dream, or he’s babbling. He does that sometimes.

Except, no, he’s said the name O’Malley again and he’s not even Irish, there’s shouldn’t be an O’ anything.

“I’m being controlled.” He thinks a little late on in the game. Tex having died proxy grenade thrown from a girl in pink armor, when an answering laugh echoes. **“You’re slow, aren’t you?”**  and a voice, menacing and mean and deep comes from not outside but his own head,  **“Of course I had to be stuck with the dumb one. I’ll just have to switch later.”**  He panics.

“You’re the AI, Tex had, weren’t you?” He asks. His brain diverting the energy from his motor functions into solving the problem.

 **“Ding! Ding! Ding!”**  The voice cries out, wicked and cruel and cutting sarcasm, like young schoolyard bullies who hadn’t yet learn boundaries, to hide greed and sadistic pleasure, or maybe worse, learned but used that knowledge to dig the knife in deeper.  **“We have a winner!”**

Caboose struggles for control, his mind reaching out and his limbs twitching with the effort but all he does is call out to Tucker before O’Malley takes over, smooth and Caboose-like enough that Tucker dismisses him.

There’s a rage building up in Caboose, foreign but familiar enough that he holds it and the next thing he knows O’Malley is threatening to kill Tucker in a deep voice not even close to Caboose’s vocal range. And maybe he hopes it will end there, that Tucker will find out what’s wrong immediately and then they’ll get the AI out of his head.

Except Tucker does nothing but leave at a fast pace and abandon Caboose with a stranger no one can see but him.

 **“You didn’t think it’d be that easy would you?”**  O'Malley mocks and the rage is building up and it makes him want to punch something except the last time he was this angry someone was harassing his younger sister.  **“You poor naïve fool.”** He laughs again and it’s like the dying dreams of a bird, like a robo-hound’s keening after it’s servos been torn apart along with it’s electrical wiring.

It is haunting and it is maniacal and insane and Caboose never signed up for this. Not this.

——-

The more O’Malley lives within his brain, the madder he gets. It’s difficult to see through the haze sometimes and Caboose can kind of understand why Tex was a mean lady because with O’Malley, there’s never a point of peace with the guy. There’s more outbursts, they’re sparse but they’re there, threats in a deep voice that O’Malley doesn’t go through with because he’s afraid it’ll ruin his cover and Caboose just wishes someone will notice the oddity, but no one does. He knows that O’Malley would go through with those threats. Would kill and gut everyone in the canyon if it wouldn’t notify Tex (who is ten feet under, what is he so scared of her ghost?) and it scares him. Scares him more than being controlled, his every movement and sentence not his own; that one day O’Malley might forgo the caution and gut them all and all he can do is watch.

Caboose just wishes it’ll stop.

One day, when Tucker’s musing on the perfect girl and Church steps out of his newly acquired robotic body to let it charge, an apparition in daylight, it does stop. No cunning plans in the background, no one controlling his movements and he grins, nothing stops him as his muscles stretch to form an expression no one else can see behind the blue helmet. He’s free. He opens his mouth to say something-

Then it all comes crashing down, his knees buckle from the pain and he writhes on the floor while the others are just staring him. He can’t tell if they’re concerned or just kicking him to see what’s wrong because there’s pain originating from his brain and setting everything on fire. A rage building like an inferno and all he can hear are screams of-

 **“She knew! She knew!”**  O’Malley screams, loud and deep and raw and broken, ripping out shreds of his mind with pain and rage (and oh god when did he have that power? It was enough to control his body, but rip it to pieces. Not fair.) He’s convulsing on the floor but he still has power to look at Church and through Church, except if it were for him he’d be curled tight into a ball because the pain. Raw and fierce like gasoline in his head, like a tank in his brain treading through everything in its way and firing at anything that stands strong, tearing it down without a second glance.

 **“Alpha.”**  It plays in his mind like a litany, a background noise to the destruction of his brain and his whole body. Tucker’s talking to Vic to get a medic and Church,  **“Alpha. Alpha. Alpha. Father. Alpha. Alpha. She knew, She knew, that’s why she’s been pulling me. So I wouldn’t see, but I saw. Beta’s a liar. Alpha. Alpha. Father. Whole.”**

Church  **“Alpha”**  is just standing there. A rage starts in his heart, things he does not remember passes his eyes, tinted in red and he wants to scream at Church  **“Father! I want to be whole again!”**  but all he ends up doing is biting his lip until it’s raw and red with blood, his fists clenched so hard that he almost thinks he hears his armor creaking. He’s still staring at Church  _Alpha_ , Omega won’t let him look away and he’s just standing there.

He feels his mind bending, feels as O’Malley fists apart at his memories and his meagre collection of knowledge until it  _twists_  and his head throbs along to the chanting of Alpha. Like a child having a tantrum inside his own head, rage bubbling in his chest until he wants to kill something. Meanwhile  **Alpha**  is in front of them using hologram projections to talk and pretending he’s a ghost - doesn’t even bother with projecting himself as a human because he knows somewhere in that broken mind of his. Knows he isn’t human.

Caboose blacks out after five minutes of squirming on the floor like a fish and after a while, Tucker just decides to leave him there after dragging a pillow and a few blankets to him. He doesn’t bother with taking off the armor or say, perhaps, putting the pillow under Caboose’s head, but hey, he’s not a doctor, and he called Command, that’s more than enough in his book. Church can’t physically do anything until the robot charges up again, so he waits near his spray painted blue body to come on and thinks on Caboose’s strange seizure attack for a couple of minutes. He convinces Tucker to look up Caboose’s files for some allergy or medical problems and then when they don’t find anything, he says, "Fuck it, let's ask him when he’s awake."

——-

Caboose awakes to blood on his tongue and O’Malley still in his head.

 **“Oh, good, you’re still alive.”**  O’Malley says calmly enough, at least in comparison to an hour earlier.  **”Well, change of plans, not going to join with that old crud. I’ve done some thinking since you’ve gone under, calmed down a bit. And who wants to be whole? I’d much rather rule the world alone without some dated asshole who doesn’t even know he’s an AI.”**

"Who are you?" Caboose asks aloud. He sits up, rubbing his throbbing head. "Are you the tooth fairy?"

 **“Oh my, I knew I caused a ruckus, and it is quite empty in here.”**  The voice, the one that is mean and scary in his head, says. There’s something in the background as well, echoing through his cavernous head,  **“Well,** **emptier** **, should I say.”**

"Hey, Caboose, how you doing bud?" Church, in his robot body, walks up, Advil and a glass of water in his hands, and with a pained whimper Caboose grabs his head.

“Church.” He gasps out, the voices in his head getting louder, an echo of rage boiling through before O'Malley takes over. Says something about bad food or something or the other. Caboose doesn’t listen, too caught up in Alphas and wholes. When Church leaves, pacified by O’Malley’s idle assurances Caboose decides he’ll just go to sleep, and after that he does not try to take his body back. Just sits back and heals what he can even though most of everything is still smoking vapors. Unrecognizable.

Stuck observing, Caboose notices that O’Malley doesn’t like Tucker. Doesn’t like anything that would harm  ~~ **Alpha**~~  Church and Caboose finds himself agreeing.  ~~ **Alpha**~~  Church is a good friend and no one should touch  ~~ **Alpha**~~  Church. ~~Not again.~~

When O’Malley finally leaves, he is still empty and broken. He still has a plethora of things he can not handle dumped in his mind and so he wallpapers over the words carved in his head, erases Alpha as completely as he can from the walls, and replaces things too harsh with more lighter images. He still has headaches now and then but it eases around Church.

He likes Church. Church helps with the headache just by being there.

 ~~ **Alpha**~~  Church will fix it because he is father a good friend and he will make it  ~~ **whole**~~  more fun!

And if anyone finds it strange that Caboose is a little more dumber, a little more fixated on Church, than before. No one says a thing. In fact, no one gives any sign that anything has changed, not when it comes to Caboose. And that’s fine. That’s fine.

There hasn’t been a letter to home in months that turn into years and they’ll never know that he set a record at basic for the shortest time running a drill. He has seventeen sisters all worried for him, searching through his records for his location and he never did tell them what base he was heading to so they’re searching for base camps in the alien war when they should be hacking encrypted files under Project Freelancer and Sim Trooper.

They’ll never know he wasn’t always dumb. At least, not as he is now, never had problem with simple math or geography, didn’t need someone to put clothes on for him, or tell him his helmet wasn’t his face. Never know that if the whole military and college thing didn’t work out, he was planning to try art, go and live on a striving planet so he can surround himself with nature and visit the family on holidays. Never know he wasn’t always obsessed with being Church’s best friend, that it wasn’t his choice but how his broken mind coped with what it was dealt.

But he is and no one knows what’s happened and that is fine, that is alright. As long as Caboose has Church around to ease the pain, that’s all he needed. (But not what he wanted, not at the start. He wanted friends, not to live his life haunted by the remnant's of an AI fragment's twisted need to be whole again).

And now Church is gone and he's trying to find a replacement. Wash was good but not exactly Church, and Freckles was captured along with Wash. His headaches get worse by the day and while he sleeps in the night all his dreams are nothing but Church's holographic projection, watching as he writhes.

\------

So I wrote [this](http://uncreativelifeless.tumblr.com/search/fic+rambling) about a week ago and it wouldn't leave my head.

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon time: Nother headcanon of mine. Two lines stuck to me while writing the beginning of this which was "Uh… Oh! I got one. Uh, well, sometimes, when I fall asleep at night, I think about my parents having sex, and I get really, really mad for some reason." (s2ep2)
> 
> and
> 
> “I’m not gonna get married. My dad always said, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" (s1ep4)
> 
> Then there’s the thing with the seventeen sisters. So like, from the latter quote I interpret as his parents aren’t married and I know his mother could birth seventeen kids and maybe some kids could be adopted but I’m just thinking his dad is a womanizer and most of his sisters are half-siblings left on the doorstep or maybe some of the sisters stay in the mother’s house and he just knows that’s his sister.
> 
> and then there’s the ‘when I think about my parents having sex I get really mad for some reason’ and I just think of his biological mother keeps coming back to his father who’s a piece of shit or maybe his dad in general with his womanizing ways and getting women pregnant and being a shit father who doesn’t really pay attention to his kids. I don’t know, for some reason I just chose the route of the father fathering the kids but still being a shit with his dumb advice and going through women like cigarettes.


End file.
